Wesfarmers approved to offload Arthur J. Gallagher

Retail giant Wesfarmers has received all the regulatory approvals needed to offload its insurance broking and premium funding operations to global broking group, Arthur J. Gallagher.

The green light from the regulators paves the way for
Wesfarmers
to exit the broking space before June 30.

Wesfarmers, which owns supermarket chain Coles, agreed to sell its broking and premium funding arms to AJ Gallagher for $1.01 billion. The group will also pocket a distribution of about $150 million repay funding of the premium funding operations.

Wesfarmers said it expects to post a pretax profit of about $310 million to $335 million from the sales.

The deal was first announced in April, and was subject to approvals from the Foreign Investment Review Board in Australia, Overseas Investment Office in New Zealand and the Financial Conduct Authority in Britain.

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“The transaction will deliver value to our shareholders and will afford customers and employees of the insurance broking and premium funding businesses the opportunity to join a leading global insurance broking company with ambitions to expand in Australia and New Zealand," Mr Goyder said in a statement.

The deal comes after Wesfarmers agreed to sell its insurance underwriting division – the bulk of its insurance arm – to Insurance Australia Group for $1.85 billion.